Powerful ’Rigoletto’ opens Sarasota Opera season

Sarasota Opera has opened its fall season with Guiseppe Verdi’s blockbuster opera, “Rigoletto,” in a production staged by Stephanie Sundine and directed by Victor DeRenzi that warmed up to a powerful punch.

Actually, the first scene of Act 1 follows a veiled menace of an introduction from the orchestra and takes us straight to the Duke of Mantua’s palace hall. This scene serves as a foundation to establish the Duke’s rakishness, the nastiness of Rigoletto in taunting the courtiers, and the deep resentment of these courtiers toward Rigoletto. Verdi has already done his part with a powerful score that musically carries the lion’s share of the experience.

Amid the set and costumes jumping with detail, the movement on stage was surprisingly staid, with only a small group of stately dancers. Credits to designers David P. Gordon (scene), Howard Tvsi Kaplan (costumes), and Tania Vergara (choreography).

We meet the Duke describing a pretty girl who has caught his eye in an introductory duet with courtier Matteo Boursa (Samuel Schlievert). William Davenport has a powerful cutting voice fully up for the high lines that Verdi gives his tenors. The rollicking aria “Questo o Quella,” his calling card, reveals that in his mind any girl will do and he will do them all.

The Duke’s randy advances are tolerated in general, despite a jealous husband or two, but are made all the more cutting when his attack dog jester, Rigoletto, unleashes the sharp tongue for which he is despised. Marco Nistico played the scornful jester in a brusque baritone, but what would it have been like if he’d given it more snarl?

The curse of the Count of Monterone (Alexander Charles Boyd), an incensed father, rolls off the Duke, but haunts Rigoletto for the rest of the show. Had there been more edge to the outrage and snarl to Rigoletto’s insults, there would have been a more stark dramatic contrast to Rigoletto’s fatherly love in the following scene with his innocent daughter Gilda.

But first, Scene 2 opens with a seamy encounter between Rigoletto and the assassin Sparafucile (Young-Bok Kim) as he walks home. Kim sent chills down the spine with his bloodless, just-business musical conversation about how a hit job is carried out and its cost.

When Rigoletto enters his world with Gilda (Hanna Brammer), the innocent daughter who dotes on him, we are treated to a lush and lyrical duet. Nearly all the music around Gilda, in her duets with her father, the Duke, and alone, are intensely beautiful. This scene has the most gorgeous music including a love tryst with the Duke in which her crystalline lines wind around florid reveries from the Duke.

Soprano Brammer stood alone after the Duke’s departure to sing the showpiece “Caro Nome” and it was exquisite.

The intricacies of the courtiers duping Rigoletto to assist in kidnapping his daughter were masterfully staged. From here on we could barely catch our breath without a throbbing pain in the heart from the tragedy of it all.

It flows quickly from the Duke’s surprisingly poignant cry that his new love Gilda has been stolen from him to the smugly satisfied chorus of courtiers reporting their vile escapade and then to the tormented Rigoletto’s pathetic search for his daughter, then in the Duke’s arms, while the courtiers mock him.

When he is finally reunited with Gilda their scene together is heartbreaking as well, but whips itself up into a vengeful fervor with “Si, vendetta.”

The final act is a real nail-biter and includes the hit “La donna mobile” when the Duke enters the home of prostitute Maddelena (Annie Chester) and her brother Sparafucile. Annie Chester’s Maddelena is brash and loose with a honeyed deep mezzo-soprano voice. Both feisty and amorous she plays it well.

The scene is punctuated by threatening thunder, lightning, and howling winds, thanks to Ken Yunker, lighting designer,

Rigoletto and Gilda are watching it all from outside the house on the split set. The four launch into a quartet that is masterful and memorable on both musical and dramatic terms. Brammer brings as much guts as beauty to the role when she returns to save her faithless lover from the assassin’s knife. Yes, Rigoletto hired Sparafucile to get his revenge, but sadly, it's his daughter that gets the knife.

While we might feel braced for the father’s anguish when he returns to pick up the corpse only to find it is Gilda, not the Duke, it was musically shocking nonetheless. The opera ended with Gilda’s last gasp and a father’s deep heartbreak.

Even with this cast of strong singers, the dramatic impact of Verdi’s score relied on Victor DeRenzi’s direction with the Sarasota Orchestra for full effect. Bravo tutti!

By Giuseppe Verdi. Conducted Victor DeRenzi, directed by Stephanie Sundine. Reviewed Friday, Sarasota Opera House, 61 N. Pineapple Ave., Sarasota. Through Nov. 17. 941-328-1300; sarasotaopera.org.

’Rigoletto’